Robots Rapidly Digitize Media Libraries

Remember when photo scanners were first released and everyone took great pleasure at scanning hard copies of old photos into digital media? Well imagine that on steroids, as now robotic technology has emerged that can automatically scan and copy entire books into digital media format.

Vienna, Austria-based company Qidenus Technologies, named after its founder Sofie Qidenus, is one of the companies that now offers high-end automated book scanning for libraries and other customers seeking to archive the world's books into digital media. While these products are not a consumer technology like digital photo scanners, scaled-down versions for the end-user market are in the works and soon will make it easy for anyone to turn their books into digital files.

The Robotic Book Scanner from Qidenus uses a series of technology to automatically turn the pages of a book and scan its contents into digital media. The product is currently used mainly by large university libraries, book archives, and companies, but lower-end products will soon come to market that will make the technology more accessible. (Source: Qidenus)

For now, however, the high-end scanners are the domain of niche customers like large university libraries and archives, as well as large companies that want to turn technical or maintenance manuals into digital media. Down the line, their use will also be at the mercy of copyright restrictions in terms of what type of material can be scanned and reused without facing the ire of publishers.

To scan books into digital format, Qidenus has developed the Robotic Book Scanner (RBS), which features an entirely automated machine that turns pages, takes photographs of each page, and renders those photos into text.

The technology uses a robotic finger to turn the pages of books, which rest in a cradle and are flattened by glass for accurate scanning. Qidenus derived the robotic finger itself from the company's flagship product -- an automated page turner for sheet music that attaches to a musician's music stand, leaving his or her hands free for playing.

Digital photo technology that includes support for Canon DSLR, Nikon DSLR, and Hasselblad DSLR scans the pages, after which 30 algorithms in Qidenus custom software image-process the photos, and object character recognition (OCR) technology turns those images into text, Sebastian Schramek, a director at Qidenus, said in an interview.

Qidenus is not the only company offering automated book scanning to specialized customers; a spinoff of Xerox in the US and 4DigitalBooks in Switzerland also offer high-end automated book scanning to customers.

One of the biggest challenges to developing the RBS -- and to anyone developing this type of technology -- is to create a mechanical page-turning finger sensitive enough to handle different types of paper used in the books it's scanning, which can be hundreds of years old. "The big challenge during our development was how to work with such a homogeneous material like paper in books -- how can you make the machine work with different kinds of material and how can it automatically turn the pages," Schramek told us.

To achieve this, Qidenus developed an intelligent system of sensors that can adapt to the different type of papers and uses pressure sensitivity so it does not harm what may be fragile pages while it turns, he said.

So true about the printed books, Elizabeth. I tend to stick with those for most everything but reference (where a search feature is useful). Not a fan of e-books for personal reading. You just can't do as much because your bound up with licensing rather than ownership. With a paper book, I can do whatever I want except actually copy it. I can loan it to a friend for whatever time period I want, I can give it to somebody, donate to the local library, or put it in a box knowing full well that I can read it in 20 year...or somebody else can after I'm long gone. Not so with the ebooks.

What I would like to see is an e-reaer that I can drop 5 feet and have it keep on working, and accidently step on it a few times without doing any damage. Possibly some of those built for the military organizations may be that tough, but the prices for the tough ones will probably also be tough. And, are there any waterproof e-readers? Not just splash resistant, but ones that don't fail after sinking to the bottom of the pool?

William, I agree that the printed book will live on for the time being...but who knows down the road? I myself am an avid reader and literature geek, and while I have an e-reader that I use on my iPad (iBooks)--and find it incredibly handy--I still buy printed books as well. Until all the licesning issues are hammered out (and the generations that grew up without the Internet are still alive), I think there will be printed books. But somewhere in perhaps the not-so-distant future the printed book may go the way of the dinosaur or become the domain of collectors, just like vinyl records, tapes and CDs did when digital music became all the rage.

Yes, the trick to turning pages does seem to be in a robotic finger sensitive enough to turn a page without damaging it, especially when it comes to books printed on old or fragile paper. Qidenus seems to have come up with innovative technology for this, and as sensors and technology become even more sophisticated, I'm sure there will be further developments in this space.

Another invention with a clear benefit to many of us, indeed. BUT it will probably not signal the end of the printed book, but rather the much improved availability. And it is certainly true that turning pages is not a trivial task, not only because some texts are quite frail, but also because in many instances pages stick to each other. That is the second challenge.

A descriptive analysis of this product would be a good topic for an article in an engineering publication such as Design News. Knowing how other folks solved a problem makes the rest of us better design engineers. It really does.

Turning pages is indeed a challenge. I was involved with some of the same problems with document feeders for copiers many years ago. One of the cleverest, best and most gentle approaches I saw at the time was from 3M. They had a "page picker" that used a "sticky finger". The finger had a special (3M, of course) tape that indexed across its head that was just sticky enough to gently pick up the page but would release it (with no residue) with very gentle pressure. I saw it on one production copier and then never saw it again. It was a great example of "out of the box" thinking and very gentle.

Having used an e-reader for several years I am well aware of the chaos in the publishing industry as all the involved parties try to get what they consider to be their fair share of the proceeds. If one library digitizes a book, it is unlikely they will be allowed to lend that digitized books to another librarie without charging a fee and giving some of that fee to the publisher. According to some published data, e-books are outselling paper books by a large margin and the large retail sellers of e-books have already had to offer their buyers rebates as a result of class-action lawsuits. The device in the article and others like it are a boon to archivists, researchers and readers but a curse to the publishers.

Interesting application of robotics. I am familiar with systems that scan large number of documents such as legal files and corporate documents. Wonder if Google will get a few of these to speed up its process of electronic capture of literature in the public domain, and excerpts of more modern publications.

Thank you for calling to my attention your company, Markus. It's hard to mention every single competitor to a product when writing a story but now that I know about ScanRobot I will do a bit more research and keep your company in mind for future stories on this topic.

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